Sony Expects Initial Loss on PSP Handheld Device -  Sony Corp does not expect to make money on its new PlayStation Portable handheld games console at launch, due to the price of components and initial development costs, the head of Sony's U.S. games unit said on Wednesday.  In an interview on the sidelines of the games industry trade show E3 in Los Angeles, Sony Computer Entertainment of America Chief Executive Kaz Hirai also said the company would need to have a minimum of six to 10 games available at the PSP's launch, both from its own studios and from third-party publishers.  But at the same time, Hirai said, it would not need that many games at launch if it could identify one or two breakout hits, "killer apps" that would drive consumers to buy the hardware just to play those games. Sony plans to launch the PSP, its most significant new game hardware in four years, later this year in Japan and in early 2005 in North America and Europe. It has not set a price for the unit, which will also play music and movies, though most in the industry expect a price in the range of $199 to $299.

Cell processor to debut in fourth quarter - Sony Corp., Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and IBM Corp. jointly announced that the first application of the Cell processor will be a workstation for a digital content creation. They also said the first Cell-based prototype will be ready in the forth quarter. The Cell processor, under joint development by Sony group, IBM and Toshiba Corp., aims for teraflop-level performance. The Cell processor will be the heart of the next generation of PlayStation 2. Hence, a workstation design will initially serve as the development environment for PlayStation "3". Detailed performance metrics for the Cell processor have yet to be disclosed. It is known to have a parallel processing architecture and teraflops floating point level computing power.

VIA announces x86-based mobile gaming console - VIA has announced the Eve mobile gaming console with x86 roots and plenty of potential as a media playback device. Here are some specs: 533MHz Eden-N Processor on a 133MHz front-side bus, 128MB DDR266 SDRAM, 20GB hard drive, VIA CN400 chipset, S3 UniChrome Pro graphics with 200MHz core clock, VIA Vinyl six-channel audio with EAX support, 4" 640x480 LCD display, two USB 2.0 ports, 802.11b Wi-Fi. Essentially, it's a little PC running Windows XP embedded.

Intel to release 800MHz FSB Prescott on June 21 and 1066MHz FSB chip in 4Q - Intel plans to introduce a new Pentium 4 chip running a 1066MHz front side bus (FSB) in the fourth quarter, according to sources at Taiwanese motherboard makers. The new processor will be an upgraded version of Intel’s desktop-use LGA775-pin Prescott, which the company is scheduled to launch on June 21. The LGA775 Prescott will initially run an 800MHz FSB. The June 21 launch will also include Intel’s 915 chipsets. The 1066MHz FSB chip, which will be numbered 720, is expected to have performance equal to Intel’s P4 Extreme Edition processor, according to the sources. With the 800MHz FSB Prescott consuming over 100 watts of power, local motherboard makers are concerned that the power consumption could be a critical issue for the 720.

IO Data to ship NEC ND-2510A DL burner in late May - The Japanese company IO Data announced today that it plans to ship the NEC ND-2510A double layer burner already by the end of this month. In related news, it should be possible to overclock a ND-2500 to a ND-2510.

Gigabit Network Adapters round-up - It is difficult to draw conclusions in roundups, especially if there is no undisputed leader. 3Com shows good performance and doesn't load the CPU much (especially in Linux). But the price makes all the difference... Hardlink shows moderate performance and is fairly cheap. The SysKonnect and Trendnet adapters have high performance and a moderate CPU load, and besides, they support a great number of OSs. But performance falls at some packet sizes in NetPIPE prevent them from becoming evident leaders. Perhaps, the new driver version will change the situation. Despite the fact that a lot of users integrate Realtek 8169 into their motherboards (thus getting a free gigabit onboard), it didn't show its best side on Tyan.

Tornado GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GDDR3 review - The 5700 Ultra offers real bang for your bucks. Nice software package, really nice product. The funny LED is simply cool. In all honesty I just have to make a small hint towards the 5900 XT series though. They are about the same price and the 5900 XT simply offers better performance due to a better architecture of the graphics core.

Multiformat at 128kbps public listening test - Rarewares has announced a new set of public listening tests of various audio codec’s encoded around 128kbps. The encoders and parameters tested are: LAME encoder 3.96 -V5 --athaa-sensitivity 1, Apple iTunes 4.2 128kbps AAC, Ogg Vorbis aoTuV tuning b2 -q 4.35, Musepack 1.14b --quality 4.15 --xlevel, Sony Atrac3132kbps, Microsoft WMA9 Std Bitrate VBR 128kbps. Who should take the test?
Anyone interested in audio quality at 128kbps, or interested in buying music from online stores. Or people that have no interest but would like to help making this test better. You don't need excellent hearing, but some good gear is welcome (headphones are must-have).